Slayer is still my favorite ascendancy, atleast when it comes to the character itself and not its in game abilities. I like warrior characters but stuff like Jugg and Berserker never appealed to me, Champion and Slayer look so much cooler in my eyes, not relying on heavy armor or gimmicks, just straight combat expertise. The Champion is a veteran who guides others on the battlefield and the Slayer gets his power from mass killing. They just feel like actual warriors that could take on any task. Slayer is based around 2 handed weapons and should hit hard while sustaining himself from the blood of his victims. Yet in the game melee hits like a wet noodle and overleech got nerfed to only last 5 seconds, pffft. They better give Slayer his redemption in 3.7.

I used to think jugg was lame and easy mode. I was right about the second point. Holy shit does jugg feel nice. Super tanky with endurance charges out the ass, don't have to worry about accuracy, just tons of damage on top of qol.

Same. First Shaper kill was with a Cyclone Slayer in 3.1, and first Uber Elder kill was with an Ele Hit Slayer in 3.5. It and Champion have been my favorite/most played ascendancies since picking the game up in 3.0. Really hoping for a re-work of Slayer and leech mechanics such that it feels strong again. I miss mapping with those leech stacks that last minutes...

Really? How are people building them now? I did the league SSF with my own Occultist build for a few weeks till I killed Uber Elder a few times. I then tried Eternity Shroud Divine Ire Trickster - seeing as I had Bottled Faith and Eternity Shroud drop SSF and I had planned on trying it regardless, but it just didn't feel as great as my Occultist.

I wanted to make a Trickster with ES and ES leech to start the league, but I wasn't sure how great it was going to be and I was worried about having issues with chill/freeze.

The thing with trickster is flat es is nowhere close to occultist. But the ascendency has so many layers of defense in the ascendency. Dodge evasion es regeneration with a ton of offensive options aswell ive played both to red maps in hc same build. Trickster ascendancy is way more versatile than occultist

There's a guy who plays zerker to 100 every league in hc, and goes MoM and warcry spam to offset the degen. It's pretty insane how tanky it builds since all the damage comes from ascendancy, you can just invest in life and mana nodes.